Out of Control (Black Dragons Inc. Book 1) Read online

  If there was a more isolated and godforsaken place on Earth, he had surely not seen it. The current temperature hovered at 127 degrees Fahrenheit, the humidity steady at 6 percent. Supposedly it rained a few inches annually, but the only sign of it he’d seen had been a few taunting gray threads of rain high in the sky that evaporated long before touching the thirsty desert.

  The scorpion, nearly the size of his palm, arched its tail threateningly as if sensing his presence. It was a distraction he couldn’t afford right now. Not when nearly a week of miserable, grueling surveillance in this hide was finally coming to an end. He hoped.

  Speaking of which, a plume of dust formed in the distance. He shifted his military-grade Zeiss long-range optical scope toward the north and zoomed in on three SUVs speeding along the valley floor toward the cluster of flat-roofed, stone-walled dwellings.

  His contact’s intel had been good: today’s meeting was turning into a who’s who of regional rebel groups. Not only were the usual suspects already here—Islamic State, Haqqani, Hezbollah—but a few other local players had shown up as well. Notably, Quds Force, an arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

  Since when did all these traditional rivals for control of this chunk of the Middle East share their toys and play nicely with the other little terrorists in the sandbox? It was tempting to wax them all, but he was here for only one guy today.

  A guy who called himself Kurbaj, which translated to the lash or the whip. Cheery moniker. Very BDSM vibe.

  Kurbaj wasn’t here yet, but Drago’s source had been positive the man would show up. Given who all had already arrived for this United Nations of genocide, he believed his source.

  The latest caravan of SUVs pulled up in front of the compound, and he tensed instinctively. He consciously went through his preshooting routine, relaxing his entire body muscle by muscle, melting into the dirt, ignoring the scorpion, which was now wandering perilously near his trigger hand. He slowed his breathing, and his pulse obediently wound down like a watch whose battery was dying.

  Lub-dub. Lub. Dub. Lub… dub.

  The middle SUV’s door opened, and three bulky men in dark suits piled out. Security guards in bad suits. AK-47s over the shoulders. Tobacco-stained teeth. Jowls going to flab. He spotted a tattoo on the back of one guy’s hand and mentally blinked in surprise. That was a Bratya tattoo. So this guy was a Russian mobster. They didn’t work for non-Russians, let alone play bodyguard for outsiders.

  A young man wearing a perfectly tailored business suit climbed out of the SUV. He had to be the primary. He looked no more than thirty. Average height. Lean physique. Light brown hair, darkly tanned skin. He looked around briefly before putting on a pair of dark sunglasses.

  Drago pegged the guy quickly: Nouveau Russian mobster. Rich, Westernized, tech savvy, and psychopathic.

  The kid’s glance at the surrounding desert was short, but it was enough. Using the camera built into his scope, Drago got a clean picture of his face.

  Huh. He knew most of the usual suspects in this part of the world but didn’t recognize this guy. Hitting the Send button on the side of the camera, he fired the image up to a satellite that would relay it to Charles Favian at the Middle East desk back at Langley.

  After all, if he didn’t earn his keep out here, the agency would call him home. And then he’d have to wait for another assignment to bring him out this way so he could pursue his personal vendetta.

  “You get that?” he breathed into the tiny microphone perched at the corner of his mouth.

  Charles Favian, arguably the top imaging and targeting analyst at Langley, murmured, “I’m running facial rec now, but it’ll take a while, assuming the NSA has him on record. Hold your position in case any more rock stars show up.”

  Drago clicked his tongue once to acknowledge the order.

  Over the next few minutes, the scorpion finally meandered beyond the shade of his camouflage cloth, and no more human visitors arrived. C’mon, Kurbaj. Where are you?

  The sun slid into the west, blinding him for several painful minutes. But eventually it winked out of sight behind a rocky ridge. Blessedly, the worst of the heat broke. Soon it would start the nightly rush toward freezing cold.

  What on earth were so many disparate factions doing meeting like this? The idea of them all coordinating some grand attack made his skin crawl. Gods, the carnage they could wreak—

  A movement between the buildings caught his attention, and he pointed his Zeiss at it.

  Children. Perhaps a dozen of them. Little boys wearing thoabs, the loose white tunics of Bedouins, and little girls wearing long black madragas, miniature versions of the robes worn by the women who also stepped outside in the crimson light of sunset.

  A soccer ball appeared, and the children kicked it around. Faint sounds of laughter and shouting carried to him. Adults filtered out of the hovels. Men. Women. The elderly. It looked as if an entire tribe of the local Bedouins called this place home.

  “Pull back, Dray.”

  The terse order in his ear startled him. “What?”

  “The brass thinks you’ve seen enough. They want you out of there. A drone’s coming on scene and will take over.”

  What drone? Why hadn’t he been briefed on that? Of course he knew the answer. The US military got off on keeping secrets from everyone, including the very intelligence agencies that fed them most of what they knew. Assholes.

  “Keep it high or over the horizon,” he muttered. “There are spotters watching the sky.”

  “Roger. Will relay.”

  “This place is crawling with civilians. I have visual on a dozen kids and nearly that many local adults.”

  “You’ve got to go. You’re already in trouble after the—” Charles bit off whatever he’d been about to say.

  “After the what?” Drago asked sharply. He curbed the volume of his whisper hard. Last thing he needed to do was give away his vulnerable, cover-challenged position.

  “Nothing,” Charles answered quickly. Too quickly. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Don’t hold out on me now, man. We’ve been through too much together.”

  Charles barely breathed the words, as if afraid of being overheard on his end. “The brothel incident.”

  If Drago hadn’t been stretched out in front of several dozen armed bodyguards and some of the world’s most violent men, protected only by a camouflage cloth, he’d have reared back hard in surprise. The agency knew about Berlin? How in the hell had they found out he’d been there?

  “What does the office know about that?” he demanded.

  “I can’t say,” Charles answered. At least he had the good grace to sound stressed.

  Just how compromised was he?

  God damn it. If he was already under a CIA microscope, his every move being watched, he couldn’t very well take out Kurbaj now. The CIA would find out he’d made an unsanctioned hit and surely come after him.

  Except what choice did he have? It was the only way to make things right. He just had to get to the end of his plan. Only then would the CIA understand and forgive. But if he stopped in the middle… he was screwed.

  Darkness fell fast out here, and in a matter of minutes, the sky darkened to navy, then black. The first stars winked into sight, and the kids went back inside. As the wind died, deep silence fell around him. In the absence of an insect population in this desiccated land, no noise broke the profound quiet.

  His mind raced. Stay and bag a terrorist in desperate need of killing, or leave and cover his own ass, but have to wait for another day? Another place. God. All the painstaking months—hell, years—of intel work he’d done to arrive at this moment. All for nothing.

  He couldn’t walk away from a shot at Kurbaj.

  But the cost, both personal and professional….

  Screw the cost. He’d take the hit—

  His mental back-and-forth stopped abruptly as he spotted a faint movement that didn’t belong in the place before him. A shadow slipped around
a corner, disappearing into an even darker shadow.

  Had he even seen that?

  He studied the tableau before him intensely.

  It took a few minutes, but there it was again. What the hell?

  It was a man. A soldier, based on the utility belt, helmet, and NODs—night optical devices. He was slipping furtively from vehicle to vehicle, planting something on the underside of each.

  What the fuck?

  Who was that? The Special Forces operator—for who else would be skulking around down there—moved like a freaking American. Every nation’s spec ops teams had their own rhythms and techniques, and they were as distinctive as the gear they each carried.

  “Chaz, we got any US military in the area?”

  “Nearest guys of ours are some observers about a hundred klicks west of you.”

  “Then who’s the spec ops asshole running around tagging cars in front of me?”

  “What?” Charles squawked with enough surprise in his voice that Drago believed him to be genuinely in the dark. “Get me a pic if you can. Preferably a facial shot.”

  “Roger.”

  The operator in question froze as a new caravan came into Drago’s field of vision in the distance and became faintly audible. The guy eased backward toward the corner of a building, paused… and then did something strange.

  He flipped up his NODs, exposing his face, and took a long, three-hundred-sixty degree look around at the entire valley. He stopped, staring roughly in Drago’s direction for a few seconds before flipping his NODs down into place over his upper face once more.

  Swear to God, it looked like the guy was intentionally looking straight at him. In that weird, suspended moment of connection, Drago focused his lens quickly and took the picture.

  Just as his finger depressed the button, recognition slammed into him. That jaw. Those shoulders….

  “Cockswinging motherfucking sonofabitch,” he breathed. He’d come. He’d actually come. They were supposed to meet up in Beirut, not here—

  —but he’d come.

  The soldier faded into the shadows once more and slipped out of sight.

  “Beg your pardon?” Charles blurted.

  “Not you. Tell your bosses I’m obeying orders for a change and moving out.”

  What in the ever-loving hell was Spencer doing? Why had he come out here without contacting him? Why hadn’t he asked what was going on before barging into the middle of this operation?

  What are you up to, Spence?

  The guy was nothing if not highly intelligent. Did Spencer know something he didn’t? Or had always-do-the-right-thing, I-know-best Spencer leaped to his own conclusions and plowed into this mission like a charging bull?

  Either way, he was now fucking up this op by the numbers. Obviously he was still the same rigid, self-righteous prick he’d always been. Dammit.

  Funny how ten years had erased his memory of that irritating little personality trait. It had been easier to remember how breathtakingly beautiful the man was, how honorable, how genuinely honest.

  Furious—beyond furious—he began the tedious process of inching backward, taking the pinkish-beige net draped over his back with him. As soon as he was clear to get up and run, he was going after Spencer Newman and demanding to know why in the bloody hell he was messing with this op.

  Then he was going to kill the smug bastard.

  It had taken Drago nearly twelve hours to work his way from the protection of the rocks to the southeast, four hundred yards across the floor of the broad wadi to this position. But he backed out considerably faster now, fueled by his raging indignation.

  “US mil has relayed intent to attack the compound,” Charles reported. “How long till you’re clear?”

  “A while. Tell the military liaison there are civilians there. Children.”

  “Hurry. The drone pilot was just given orders to move his Predator into position.”

  “Negative, negative!” he whispered urgently. “I repeat. There are dozens of civilians in that compound!”

  “I heard you the first time,” Charles ground out. “And before you bite my head off, I already relayed that to the military desk.”

  Horror unfolded in his chest. Had Spencer called in the attack? He must have. Those must be homing beacons for air-to-ground missiles he had placed on the vehicles.

  “Sixty seconds to green-light,” Charles’s voice said from far away, from somewhere beyond the roaring in his ears.

  “Call it off!”

  “Can’t. You need to get moving.”

  His limbs refused to push him backward. He couldn’t lie here and witness the slaughter of those kids.

  And Spencer.

  Jesus. Spencer was still among the buildings somewhere. As pissed off as he still might be at the guy for the way they’d left things, he couldn’t sit here and watch Spencer die at the hands of his own military. If anyone was going to kill Spencer Newman, it was going to be him. By God, he’d earned the privilege.

  “Thirty seconds. No time for stealth, Drago. Get up and run.”

  He rose to his feet, the camo net billowing out behind him, cape-like, on the evening breeze.

  Charles was right. He should run. But away from Spencer, or toward him? To save himself? Or to shout a warning? Locked in a rare moment of indecision, he stood there staring at the bodyguards, who’d frozen in their doorways, staring back at him like he was some sort of bizarre apparition. Wrapped in red-beige rags from head to foot, he must look like a djinn mummy rising from the desert.

  “Ten. Nine. Eight,” Charles counted tersely.

  He took off running. Toward the compound.

  “Spencer! Incoming! Get down!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. Please God, let his voice carry far enough in the cold, still air to reach the guy.

  The spotter at the nearest corner of the main building lurched into motion. He disappeared inside the building where the meeting was taking place.

  “Five. Four. Get down!” Charles shouted.

  A fiery streak illuminated the twilight sky overhead, racing toward him at incomprehensible speed.

  A massive flash of light and a deafening blast of sound exploded the night. The ground heaved beneath his feet, and he was thrown backward violently as a searing-hot concussion wave slammed him onto his back.

  The force of his landing knocked the breath out of him, and he stared up, gasping ineffectively for air that would not come, at a ghoulish cloud of smoke over his head, illuminated by the flickering fires of hell.

  Pain radiated through him as he finally managed to drag in a scorched, smoky breath that made him cough.

  Shattered bits of concrete and lava rock pelted him, and he curled into a fetal ball, throwing his arms over his head as the remains of the compound, and a good chunk of the valley, began to rain down around him.

  What had the US military done? What had Spencer done?

  A sense of doom enfolded him.

  Nothing good could come of this.

  The choking dust began to dissipate, and silence settled upon the valley. The deep silence of death.

  Spencer.

  Oh God. Not Spencer.

  Chapter Four

  SPENCER TOOK off running when the familiar rasp of Drago’s voice reached him, shouting of incoming fire. Sprinting all out, he cleared the compound just as the scream of the incoming missile became audible. He took a running dive, laying out flat as he leaped behind the nearest boulder of any size and slapped his hands over his ears.

  Ka-boom!

  The blast-furnace-hot overpressure wave felt as if it separated his entire body into a trillion individual molecules. And then they clapped back together all at once. Excruciatingly.

  Oh Christ. Drago was practically under that missile.

  He stood up and took off running in the general direction of where he’d been told Dray was hiding, circling wide of the smoking crater that had been a compound full of people a few seconds ago.

  “Drago!” he shouted as
he staggered around the rubble and the column of smoke rising from it. Bits of concrete, rock, and he didn’t want to know what else smacked his helmet, but he pressed forward grimly.

  He rounded the blast zone and spied a pile of dusty camouflage net a few hundred feet ahead of him. No, no, no. He put on a burst of speed. Be alive. Be alive, you glorious bastard.

  He fell to his knees beside the jumble of brown rags and camo netting. He yanked it back to reveal the man laid out beneath. “Drago?”

  Movement. A groan. Oh, thank God.

  Drago’s dark hair, tanned face, and black beard stubble were coated in beige dust. He looked eerily ghostlike. His head turned slightly, and one dark eye opened, unfocused, disoriented.

  The past ten years fell away in an instant, and they were back in Tel Aviv on that awful day. Oily black smoke tinged with the scent of death rose in a thick column beyond Drago and hung there, heavy and oppressive. Or maybe it was the spirits of all the people who’d just died lingering in the acrid-tasting air. God. It was exactly like Tel Aviv.

  “Are you hurt?” Spencer tried. “Can you move?”

  “Am I dead?” Dray mumbled. “We going… to Hell?”

  “Probably. But not today. I’m alive, and so are you.”

  Drago’s head turned more fully. Decent range of motion, no expression of pain. Probably no broken neck. That was good. This time both eyes opened to stare up at him. “What are you doing here?”

  “Saving your ass, apparently.”

  “Bull. I saved yours.”

  “Can you walk, Dray?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Let’s find out.” Spencer reached down and helped lift him to a seated position. “Easy. Are you dizzy? That blast could’ve messed up your ears and your balance pretty good.”

  “Ya think?”

  He looped his arm around Dray’s waist, which was as hard and fit as he remembered it. Drago wasn’t the kind of guy who worked out in a bougie gym, chasing a photo-ready six-pack. But he was the kind of guy who lived hard and worked harder and had a body honed into layer upon layer of functional muscle. A warrior’s physique.